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More Than a Bit Overdue

An overdue library book with a storied past - including being pulled across an ice-covered St. Lawrence River on a skid - is back home in Canada after no less than 110 years. Story from Recorder.

The cost of its journey, dating back to 1899 from the Lyn Public Library (ON), should have been more than $9,000, but it is a fine retired Denver, Colorado, engineer Dale Fenton Baird Sr. will not have to pull out of his wallet.

With book in hand Wednesday, the American walked into the Lyn Heritage Place Museum with the five-inch thick Webster's Dictionary his great uncle Mutt failed to return just before the turn of the century.

The entire Baird family moved from the village of Lyn to Brant, New York, in the winter of 1899. "Now the old librarian can rest easy," said Lyn Heritage Place president Orval Ladd, drawing a big laugh from a crowd of supporters and local historians gathered to see the newly famous tome returned to its homeland.